DOMESTICATE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Domesticate

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/dəmˈɛstəkˌeɪt/ Listen

verb

Domesticate v. t. (past & past part. domesticated; pres. part. domesticating)

To make domestic; to habituate to home life; as, to domesticate one's self.

To cause to be, as it were, of one's family or country; as, to domesticate a foreign custom or word.

To tame or reclaim from a wild state; as, to domesticate wild animals; to domesticate a plant.

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Etymology of 'Domesticate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Domesticate" Quotes from Famous Books

... direction? The excessive tameness, too, of the young rabbit, while easily explicable as a result of unconscious selection, is not easily explained as a result of acquired habit. No particular care is taken to tame or teach or domesticate rabbits. They are bred for food, or for profit or appearance, and they are left to themselves most of their time. As Sir J. Sebright notices with some surprise, the domestic rabbit "is not often visited, and seldom handled, and yet ...

— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... lady, it was chased by some dogs, and ran away to the woods near the town, and never came back again. Dogs will always hunt tame fawns when they can get near them, so it seems a pity to domesticate them only to be killed in so cruel a way. The forest is the best home for these pretty creatures, though even there they have many enemies beside the hunter. The bear, the wolf, and the wolverine kill them. Their only means of defence lies in their fleetness of foot. ...

— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill

... in poetry has recently been defined as "the man who regards his passions as their own excuse for being; who does not domesticate them either by understanding their cause or by conceiving their ideal goal."[28:1] One will readily appreciate the application of this definition to Walt Whitman. What little unity there is in this poet's world, is the composition ...

— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... enduring and flourishing under a more or less extensive range of temperature and other climatic conditions; and, secondly, that most plants and some animals are, more or less closely, adapted to climates similar to those of their native habitats. In order to domesticate or naturalize the former class in countries not extremely differing from that from which the species was brought, it will not be necessary to acclimatize, in the strict sense of the word. In the case ...

— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... before he is old enough to be put to work), that it is only in countries where there is a super-abundance of forest in which he can be allowed to grow to maturity at his own "charges" (so to speak) that it is worth while to attempt to domesticate and make use of him. For most purposes three horses are more "handy" than one elephant. The elephant is caught when he is already grown up, and then trained. It is as a matter of economy that he is not bred in ...

— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

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